Threads?

[nobody_]

>
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I've gathered about timing you 
> can't have any such guarantees about getting 1ms updates on a non-realtime 
> OS (such as windows xp), with or without threading.

There are alot of microseconds in a millisecond ;)
If you do countperiod/microseconds and get lucky you even get your cpuspeed.

Remove as many services as possible and its possible to get really close to 
realtime at a millisecond level.